to be made flesh again
by elenathehun
Summary: To be the Avatar is to be the spirit bridge between this world and the next. It doesn’t mean you don’t suffer. Featuring Avatars Aang, Roku, Kyoshi, Kuruk, and Yangchen.


Title: to be made flesh again (samsara edition)  
Summary: To be the Avatar is to be the spirit bridge between this world and the next. It doesn't mean you don't suffer.  
Author's Note: My first go-around in A:tLA in quite awhile (has it really been three or four years? It doesn't feel like it...) Ironically, I've been reading Vathara's story _Embers_ (which is amazing! Go read it if you haven't already!) and it touched off some thought about the relationship between one Avatar in the next, especially considering how Roku mentored Aang in the show.

_EDIT: Gah, formatting is such a pain._

**~avatar~**

Kyoshi does not appear to Roku at all in the last years of his life. By then, all they did was argue when they met – about the world, about Sozin, about Roku's supposed dereliction of his duty between the spirit world and human world. So it's with some relief that Roku finds Kyoshi no longer seeks him out in meditation, on the solstice and equinox, on the day of the dead and the new year. He tends to his wife and children and home and does not listen to the whispers in the wind, the trembling in the earth, the turbulence in the water. He is blind even to the smoking fires.

That's why he doesn't know his home is about to be destroyed until it's far too late for him to save it. He dies there, staring into the stars, and when he lives again, Kyoshi is beside him as they watch a child come into the world. For the first time in years, Kyoshi looks at him, and the moment stretches on and on. Finally, she speaks, and she sounds wearier than he has ever heard her.

"Watch over him. Try not to fail in your duty as I did mine."

**~avatar~**

Kyoshi is fourteen, and far away from her home when she realizes she is the Avatar. There are no earthbending teachers in her home on the southern peninsula, so her parents send her to Omashu in the north to learn her craft. She's lived here six years, and is still desperately homesick for the taste of fresh fish and her sisters' laughing voices and cold air before the snow.

Here, there's only soldiers' hardtack and hoarse yells and the still air before another attack. Chin has held Omashu under siege for 100 days, and Kyoshi has spent most of that time as a soldier on its' ramparts. They've held firm so far, but it's only a matter of time until Chin breaks through, or they run out of food.

Today, Chin is going to try once again to break through the walls.

For a day and night, Chin's earthbenders pound the walls of the city, searching for an opening, but the defenders stand tall. But as the dawn light breaks over the horizon, the soldiers on either side of Kyoshi drop from exhaustion, and Kyoshi is the only person left the hold the line. And Kyoshi is strong and talented and tall, but even she cannot defeat so many others. So she swallows and hold her head high and tells herself that if she's going to die, at least let her death hold off the invaders long enough for the others to plug the gap. It's only at the last minute something in Kyoshi rebels at the thought of dying so far from her home–

–and then there is light and power and a voice saying _sorry about this, kid. I never meant to saddle you with such a heavy burden._

When she comes to, Kyoshi's face is wet. She is far beneath the city, and a badgermole is snuffling her face curiously. When she stands and looks up at it, it makes a crooning sound and licks her, and for the first time in months, Kyoshi smiles. They go back up to Omashu together, because even though it isn't her home, it is her responsibility, and that's enough for her right now.

**~avatar~**

Kuruk sees Yangchen only rarely – he's not the meditating type, and there's really not much for her to impart to him in these times of peace. She's such a serious woman, too – he teases her sometimes about her sense of duty, which has left no work for himself, but she only frowns and says sternly, "You shouldn't always wait for me to come to you."

There's probably some greater meaning in her response, but Kuruk has always been awful at riddles.

Then Ummi is pulled into the water while she walks toward him, and Kuruk understands, finally, what Yangchen was talking about. He spends the rest of his life looking for trouble, and every year, when he comes to the Spirit World to search for his wife, he asks Yangchen to come with him. Sometimes she says yes, and those are always the hunts where he comes the closest to finding Ummi.

This time, he'll come to her instead of the other way around.

**~avatar~**

It doesn't seem real to Yangchen. Salaksartok's body is at her feet, and his army is prostrating before her, but she can't hear or see or feel anything, anything at all. Then she inhales, and the taste of blood and burnt flesh settles on her tongue, and everything is too much all at once –

–and for a moment she is in the new capital of the Fire Nation, her predecessor beside her. It's quiet and empty, like it never is in real life, and the wind blows off the sea into the streets. It's a good clean smell. The last Avatar puts his hand on his shoulder, and she turns to face him, struck, as always, by the clear honey color of his eyes. "Well done," he says without a smile–

–she's back at the coast, defeated northerners standing at last. _Suinnak, Suinnak_, they murmur, and Yangchen exhales, tilts her face up to the sun shining down, and gets to work. She is the Avatar, after all.


End file.
